Russia of the Tsars

Between the 17th century and the revolution of 1917, the Russian Tsars became absolute rulers of the largest and most diverse empire in the world. How and why did this empire - so powerful, yet in many ways so backward - come into being and survive so long? Peter Waldron tells the stories of all the Russians, exploring the vast expanses of the empire and the lives of the rural peasants, describing the ways in which Russia took on, or rejected, Wetern influences, and recounting how the empire was built and maintained. He examines the great flowering of Russian art, literature and music, the pressures for and against reform, and finally the fall of the Tsarist regime in a cataclysm of violence.